Art Shift: Reuse of Street Fighter Alpha sprites, and the ensuing clash in art style and animation quality, was one of the strongest complaints. Morrigan's constant reuse of her very first sprite is still a vivid running joke in many circles.

Bowdlerise: The North American release is notable for its level of censorship not found in prior Capcom fighting games. Moves with "Genocide" (Tiger Genocide and Genocide Cutter) in them were replaced with "Destroyer". Yamazaki's S&M move name was changed as well. Rugal calling out his Genocide Cutter was replaced with a generic grunt. God Rugal was changed to Ultimate Rugal. Due to Viewers are Morons, Shin Akuma was untouched and became a Bilingual Bonus.

Dialogue Tree: The games are full of this, with stuff like Geese throwing a Reppuuken at Bison to blow his cape away.

Non Dubbed Grunts: Like other fighting games of the time. Some special introductions are full of dialogue (and sometimes even Mythology Gags) that are completely incomprehensible if you don't understand Japanese. Special post-battle victory banter text were dropped in the overseas versions similar to what happened in the Street Fighter Zero games.

The Unexpected: While a few character choices are no-brainers (Rock, Haohmaru, Athena), others are more of the "Wait, what?!" variety (Chang, Eagle, Hibiki Takane, Kyosuke, Maki).

And then there's Ryuhaku Todoh, a character whose mostly been a background cameo as a Running Gag after his first playable appearance, way back from the first Art of Fighting. Capcom Vs SNK 2 marks the second game in which he's playable.

Updated Rerelease: Capcom vs. SNK 2: EO, with many tweaks, and two new groove choices. The Game Cube version dropped online multiplayer though and is the only console version (aside from the Western PlayStation 2 releases) without it.